The survey was conducted in four oncology inpatient medical units at a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centre in Baltimore, MD, where the ICDSC has been used for more than five years.

The survey had two major sections: (1) nurse perceptions of key aspects of delirium screening using the ICDSC (14 questions), and (2) nurse perceptions of potential barriers to the assessment and treatment of delirium (seven questions each).

This replication of questions was done to enable direct comparisons of nurse perceptions of delirium screening with prior studies in order to understand if there were common barriers generalizable beyond individual hospital sites (not intending to directly compare nurse perceptions of the ICDSC to the CAM-ICU).

To evaluate any effect of duration of use of the ICDSC on nurse responses, respondents were arranged, on an a priori basis, into three groups (< 2 years, 2-4 years, and > 4 years experience with the ICDSC) and mean scores for individual questions and the four domains were compared among these three nursing groups using Students' t-tests.

More than 80% of the respondents had been practising for greater than two years and using the ICDSC for greater than two years.

In the first section, 13 of 14 individual questions and three of four domains had a mean score >3, indicating that, on average, nurses tended to "agree" that they had knowledge of delirium, confidence in the ICDSC and found the ICDSC to be useful.

When comparing mean survey scores by respondents' length of ICDSC use, 13 of 14 individual questions and three of four domains showed a similar pattern across the three groups (Tables 2 and 3).

There were no differences in the frequency that a barrier was identified by amount of nursing experience with ICDSC (Table 5).

Our survey demonstrates that nurses perceive delirium screening using the ICDSC to be useful and have knowledge and confidence in using it.

These differences may be because 80% of nurses in this evaluation had been using the ICDSC for greater than two years, while in the two prior studies, the survey was administered during early implementation of the CAM-ICU delirium screening tool.

In our survey, 88% of respondents reported that the ICDSC was easy to complete.

Instituting routine monitoring and assessment for delirium through the use of validated assessment tools such as the CAM-ICU and ICDSC, critical care nurses can detect the early development of delirium.

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